Customer Reviews

The Sky Fisherman: A Novel

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4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
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Easily coined as a coming of age story, Craig Lesley's brilliant work *The Sky Fisherman* contains as many unpredictable currents as the river which flows through it.

Lesley establishes characters with ease, embellishment and energy. His language suits the people he creates, the landscapes described and, most importantly, the town that combines both entities. He does not shy away from intriguing subjects like death, mourning, sorrow, lost dreams, prejudice, love, arson and murder.

Told through the eyes of young Culver, the protagonist whose father was "lost" on the river Lost while fishing with his uncle, Lesley allows him to know more than he should but retain a striking amount of innocence throughout. Although Culver admits to flashes of his future such as, "Deep in the marrow of my bones, I felt that nothing was going to turn out as we had hoped, and I felt sick for all of us, especially my mother.

Culver's mother, who facilitated the move back to Gateway, the place of her husband's death and the home of his brother, Jake, is sensible, likable and sometimes surprising. The strength she needs to leave her second husband, Riley Walker, is mustered one day in a cafe which served bad cottage cheese and sour pears.

Culver doesn't mind the new surroundings. Riley walked his family from one railroad town to another on his general decent with the Union Pacific Railroad. Landing in his last two dog town, losing his wife and adopted son finally drives him over the edge, causing him to torch the town before turning into a vagrant.

The future looks bright for Culver and his mother, they both have jobs, they have their own house and they are rid of Riley, they believe. Culver works at this Uncle Jake's adventure outfitting store and is often left in charge when Jake is leading fishing trips with the "dudes."

The colorful characters who grace the threshold of Jake's store are as interesting as their names and stories. Gigantic Gabriel Webster, "Gab" is the station manager for the local radio station. He continually tries to sell advertising and consistently sees ways for the town and businesses to grow. Buzzy Marek is a crop duster who "swoops so low he's got to burp to clear the barbed-wire fences." Sniffy St. John is a night watchman and glue mixer for the ply wood mill. Seaweed Swanson is a retired chief petty officer of the United States Navy but has trouble with the clock and "actually spent two extra years in the Navy before realizing he could retire with full pensions after twenty" he blamed this on "too many trips across the international date line."

All of these characters also have mugs hanging in the Oasis cafe with "nicknames labeling their coffee cups...I (Culver) enjoyed trying to match the customers with their colorful monikers: Big Joe, Babe, Grasshopper, Heavy Duty, Short Stack, Skook." And Culver often walks home alone from the cafe in order to "study the town at night and consider how I fit in it."

Just as the colorful characters cannot be ignored, the powerful force of the river takes on characteristics of its own. Culver becomes a man on this river by not only challenging the rapids which claimed his father's life, but also pulling his first dead body on the Lost and almost getting pulled under by a panicked tourist. Jake contends that "There's a fool born a minute and only one dies a day."

Also surging through this novel, are the beliefs and teachings of generations. Jake and Culver's father took his boys fly fishing on the river frequently. Jake remembers that "Whatever he knew about the river, that's what he saw in the sky....There's the Sky Fisherman. Those stars closest to the mountain are the hip boots. Straight above is his vest, and the little curved line of stars is a pipe jutting out his mouth. That long row of curved stars makes up his fly rod. From the deep bend in that rod, I'd say he's hooked a dandy." Jake passes on to Culver important family history and respect for the nature surrounding him.

Another current swirling in this tale is Native American mythology, beliefs and humor. Gateway is situated next to Hollywood, a reservation, which is also plagued with scandal, murder and suspicion. The tribal policeman, Billyum Bruised Head, befriends Culver due partly to his relation to Jake and also his display bravery.

Unfortunately for the characters, there is also a deep undertow which pulls at the inhabitants, sometimes cursing their dreams forever. Culver witnesses extreme drought which results in unbeleivable fires and more men lost.

Lesley's previous books, *Winterkill* and *River Song* are equally as intriguing novels. His ability to establish characters and his art of storytelling are phenomenal. Even those not thrilled about fly fishing can enjoy this latest effort and those who are will have an enhanced read. Lesley is also a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in Portland, Ore., which is obvious from his poignant topical descriptions.

Craig Lesley has the uncanny ability to draw readers into his narrative immediately. His characterizations and dialogue are so realistic that it's often difficult to believe his works are fiction. In `The Sky Fisherman,' Lesley writes something of a coming of age story, in which the book's narrator Culver Martin comes to terms with his father's death years earlier and the circumstances that surround and haunt relations between himself, his mother and his uncle. At the same time, Lesley provides a real picture of relations in a small town near an Indian reservation. Here Lesley brings to life the complex feelings and resentments on both sides of this line, i.e. among the town's mill-workers, farmers, etc. and the Indians on the other. Also well-rendered is the love for and obsession with fishing and hunting on the part of the locals, which the author brings to life in his evocative descriptions of the landscape - although he fictionalizes many place-names, it's obvious that he is referring to the Deschutes River in Oregon. This is certainly Lesley's best novel.

Craig Lesley is one of those writers that well-meaning acquaintances tried to push on me several years ago. Hence, I resisted much of his work, and reluctantly read _Winterkill_ one afternoon out of a sense of obligation. After reading _The Sky Fisherman_, I'll likely become one of those who pushes his work on others.

The story is narrated by Culver, a teenager at the time of the events in the book, and told from a point of view some time later. These events were decisive moments in Culver's coming of age, and marked a critical time of transition for the network of small towns at the center. Young Culver must find the way to deal with the traumas of his father's death, his step-father's failures, his mother's fears, and more adventure helping his uncle Jake than most young men are called upon to survive. Culver's drive to know more about his father brings out buried conflicts that threaten to destroy the little bit of stability that anchors his existence. Lesley gives Culver a voice through these struggles that offers a gripping narrative. Culver's youth and inexperience prior to the momentous events come through clearly in his reflections as an adult. There is wisdom in Culver's perspective, but Lesley avoids the pitfalls of forcing this wisdom on the reader.

In some respects, this book is like a large number of other coming-of-age Western novels, from _Huckleberry Finn_ to _A River Runs Through It_. With its setting in border towns near an Indian Reservation, and communities where the economic life centers on lumber and river recreation, the book aptly reflects life in the rural West. Unlike so many other such novels, however, Lesley allows a sensitive and perceptive portrayal of Indian-white relations into the heart of the book, but without making race relations the driving force of the narrative. In doing so, he may get closer to the heart of the West than most of the novelists and historians who have made the effort.

This novel is a serious work of fiction, entertaining and provocative. It stimulated me as a reader in several ways. I'm eager to return to _Winterkill_, as well as Lesley's other novels. I'm stimulated to make a dent in my pile of unread books by a host of other writers. And, I'm provoked to write by Lesley's powerful handling of the language. In addition, reading this book the week prior to a steelheading trip on the Deschutes River also proved to be good timing. This book energized me in a fundamentally important way: it reminded me of the reasons money saved from avoiding a cable-TV subscription is well-spent on literature.

I've read all of Lesley's books and can recommend them all. His real talent centers on an acute ability to elegantly and truthfully convey the dynamics of the son-father relationship in all it's manifestations (it's nephew-uncle in the case of The Sky Fisherman, but that's not really important), the intricacies of small town life and the tensions between Native American culture and greater American society.

These are "guy" books. The few women who inhabit the pages are little more than caricature--the action is the interactions between men, between men and boys and between men, boys and nature.

The real pleasure in Lesley's books is that while the story has nothing to do with how you related to your father in terms of the nature of the story, place and/or characters, by the end of the story you realize it has everything to do with you and your father. Lesley has captured the essence of the relationship--that's the substance. The rest is just well written window dressing, but very engaging and engrossing window dressing.

I'd suggest any woman beating her head against the wall trying to find a great gift for a father or husband give one of Lesley's books. You can't go wrong whichever one you choose.

Having just completed a raft trip on the deschutes river, this book was given to me by a friend. It captured me from the first page and held me through the last. My experience in growing up near a similar railroad siding and having friends who traveled and worked on the railroad then spending the last twenty years guiding on rivers was captured to even the little details. This book so mirrors my experience that I ended up reading it in a single sitting. Lesley's characters are real, the experience he describes is real and the tragedies experienced along the river are so real as to be nearly non-fictional. This is a must read, I have ordered every other book he has written!

I read this book in the course of two sun-filled afternoons, sitting on a hammock. The book, much like the afternoons, was leisurely paced and ultimately quite enjoyable. Lesley does a fine job of weaving a wonderful fabric of character development - by the end of the novel, you almost feel like one of the boys at the store, throwing good-natured jabs at one another. I appreciated the vagueness and ambiguity around the sub-plots, allowing the reader to decide which events were critical and which weren't. Much like the river he aptly describes, the book had many channels, eddies and currents, all painted with a deft literary brush. Well worth the read.

A boy becoming a man while living in a small town with his widowed mother and bachelor uncle. While tragic events spawn heroic efforts to save lives and property, young Culver watches his uncle Jake seek redemption for events long past. In the end, how can one take away from this novel the idea that mistakes, especially grave mistakes, can leave lasting scars. Craig Lesley's descriptions are masterful. I felt the warmth and dryness of summer and the cold grayness of winter. Read this book.

It's about a family and their struggles. I liked it. You should deffently read it. It was very good. Alot of information.

Lesley does a great job describing the awareness of Culver as he meets challenges growing up without a father. Culver's mother is a strong influence on the boy, but the real character he tries to emulate is his uncle who is a real outdoor's man. I have enjoyed all of Lesley's books and this one was also very good.

Craig Lesley did an excellent job of portraying the trials of being human. These trials ranging from social pressures to death made me think of how I deal with such issues in life. I have always loved mysteries, Matlock and Perry Mason were my favorite TV shows, so I really enjoyed thinking about what would happen next with the underlying mysteries of this book. I would definitely recommend The Sky Fisherman as an easy to read, fun book.